Motorola has revealed that it was unable to include a fingerprint scanner on the Nexus 6 because Apple pipped it to the industry's best provider of biometric security.

Company CEO Dennis Woodside said that the Cupertino firm's acquisition of the unnamed company left its rivals with nowhere to turn for the technology.

"The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier. So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren't there yet," he told The Daily Telegraph.

However, the Motorola boss does not believe that the inclusion of a finger scanner would have significantly improved the Nexus 6, adding: "[It] wouldn't have made that big a difference."

Although Woodside did not name the biometric security supplier in question, it is believed to be AuthenTec, the company Apple acquired in 2012.

It has been speculated that future Nexus smartphones could come with biometric security features on board, but platform holder Google is yet to confirm this.